Early years and the Civil War
Alexander Bek, the writer behind the story Volokolamsk Highway, was born on January 3, 1903, in Saratov. His father, Alfred Beck, served as a general in the medical service and led a military hospital. A family tale suggests that the great-grandfather of writer Christian Beck worked as a seasoned postmaster and was tasked with organizing the Russian post after being ordered from Denmark.
At sixteen, Bek finished the Saratov First Alexander-Mariinsky boys’ real school and joined the Red Army. During the Civil War he fought on the Eastern Front near Uralsk and sustained injuries in action.
Bek began his journalism with a handful of war stories for a divided newspaper. By seventeen he had become the chief editor of the Novorossiysk publication Krasnoye Chernomorye. The publication carried various names over the years, including Izvestia of the Novorossiysk City Revolutionary Committee and Izvestia of the Chernomorsky District Revolutionary Committee, later known as Novorossiysk Rabochiy. The first issue, published on March 29, 1920, highlighted the Red Army’s combat achievements in Novorossiysk. Each issue closed with a note acknowledging the city revolutionary committee and editor A. Beck.
In 1966, Grigory Freiman, who directed the Novorossiysk branch of the State Archives, doubted that a teenager could run the newspaper. He sent Beck a letter asking for confirmation. Beck replied that he indeed served as the editor of Krasnoye Chernomorye. He recalled that during the capture of Novorossiysk, he edited Our Way, the political department of the 22nd division. Later, a decision merged Our Way with the regional paper, resulting in Red Black Sea Region for a time while the political department moved to Krymskaya. The original Our Way was restored in Krymskaya, and the fate of the editor-in-chief after that remains unclear. The note was dated April 21, 1966.
From 1931 onward, Beck published pieces in collections such as History of Factory and Plants, People of Two Five-Year Plans, and Cabinet of Memoirs, all associated with Maxim Gorky. His work appeared in Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestia as well.
Beck reflected on his development, saying in his essay Pages of Life that the Gorky publications helped him acquire a writing craft that matched his experiences and inclinations. He described this skill as uniquely suited to his voice, though not universally applicable.
To gather material for his early prose, Beck visited Kuznetsk-Sibirsky, Magnitogorsk, Donbass, Dnepropetrovsk, and other industrial centers. There, he found inspiration for the story Kurako, about Mikhail Kurako, a metallurgist recognized as a founder of the Russian blast furnace school. Beck also authored Notes of a Blast Furnace Master and Life of Vlas Lesovik, among other pieces. His concise style, built on sharp plotting and faithful detail, became a hallmark of his storytelling.
The Great Patriotic War and the Volokolamsk Highway
When the Second World War began, Bek joined a distinctive Red Army unit, the Writers Company of the Moscow People’s Militia, part of the Krasnopresnenskaya Rifle Division. The company was formed in 1941 from Moscow’s professional writers. Fellow soldiers remember Beck as the heart of the group, a presence that accompanied the forces to Berlin and beyond, marking Victory Day there.
In early 1942, Beck gathered material for his best-known work, Volokolamsk Highway. After speaking with soldiers from the 8th Panfilov Guards Division, he shaped the portrayal of Major General Ivan Panfilov. Panfilov was celebrated for his care for soldiers and for coining famous lines such as Do not rush to die – learn to fight, A soldier must fight with his mind, A soldier goes to war not to die but to live, and Victory is made before war. By mid-1942, the author received permission from Znamya magazine to focus on writing the story, and in 1943 it appeared under the headline Panfilov’s men in the first line.
The narrative centers on a real battalion from Panfilov’s division led by senior lieutenant Cossack Bauyrzhan Momysh-Uly. In late 1941, this unit slowed a stronger enemy’s advance toward Moscow in the Volokolamsk area. For Momysh-Uly, it was his first combat command experience.
The book portrays the commander confronting fear and betrayal within some soldiers, yet uniting most of the men into a capable unit. The story emphasizes the inner thoughts of the battalion commander, a focus not often found in military literature. Within a month of the Volokolamsk fighting, Momysh-Uly became regimental commander and later led a division in February 1942. The tactics of using small forces to fight larger ones were pioneered by Panfilov and applied by Momysh-Uly, and are now studied in military science as the Momysh-Uly spiral. The approach involved cutting off the road, drawing the enemy away, and returning to the main path in a repetitive cycle, forcing the enemy to expend time and energy. This method gained recognition worldwide and influenced training in Finland, China, East Germany, and Latin America.
Bek later described the spiral as a pattern of isolated advances and sudden withdrawals that tested and degraded enemy troops while preserving his own. The method’s impact extended beyond the war, shaping tactical thinking in diverse theaters of operation.
Evaluation of the Volokolamsk Highway by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
Volokolamsk Highway gained a following among Latin American revolutionaries. Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara spoke of it as a key source of inspiration. When Cuban journalists asked Castro who he admired from World War II, he answered that the hero of Alexander Bek’s Volokolamsk Highway was Bauyrzhan Momysh-Uly, a Kazakh commander who led the battalion near Moscow.
Castro later noted that the idea of using patriotism to mobilize support for the homeland came to him after reading the book. As news of Cuban interest spread, Momysh-Uly invited Castro and delegation members to visit, offering hospitality despite limited conditions at the time. In 1963 a Cuban delegation traveled to meet the battalion commander, and Castro eventually invited Momysh-Uly to Cuba, where he was warmly welcomed.
After the war
In the postwar era, Beck produced a series of articles on Manchuria, Harbin, and Port Arthur. He wrote extensively about metallurgists, producing the collection Housemen, the novel New Profile, and the novel Youth, the latter co-authored with his wife, Natalia Loiko. Loiko was a writer and architect. Their daughter Tatyana, born in 1949, grew into a poet and literary critic.
In 1960, Beck published two sequels to Volokolamsk Highway, the novels A Few Days and General Panfilov’s Reserve. He also produced the novel Talent (Berezhkov’s Life), about aircraft designer Alexander Mikulin, and the novel New Appointment, centered on the former Minister of Metallurgical Industry Ivan Tevosyan. The latter book faced publication delays when Tevosyan’s widow opposed its portrayal of her private life. It first appeared in Germany and was published in the Soviet Union in 1986.
Beck resided in Moscow in later years, passing away on November 2, 1972. He was laid to rest at Golovinsky Cemetery.